making homemade deer/venison jerky

Since a friend of ours goes out deer hunting, he gave us some meat to try. My brother in Law was interested in making deer jerky since he tried it before and loved it. We have used the deer meat to make stews and chili and the result was good but still had a tough gamey smell. So we wanted to know what we could do more to enhance flavor and get rid of the gamey smell.

Instead of the traditional beef meat to make jerky we use Deer/Venision meat. This is very unique in that deer meat is tougher and has less fat. Also, instead of slicing the deer meat we grounded the meat then put in a curing solution then marinated it in different spice blends for different unique flavors. Then using a jerky gun we pumped out the grounded marinated deer meat into long strips. It is then placed into a 200F oven (oven set at lowest temperature) and left to cook for 3 hours to dehydrate and turn into jerky meat.

The final result is chewy, tender deer meat that is slightly salty but with a sweet taste (from the marinate used). The whole game meat smell is gone. (when making deer meat into stew or chili you still get a game like smell even though you have put other spices and sauces to try to mask the smell). People who tried it did not believe it was deer meat. They thought it was the traditional beeef. A very successful result.

This was so successful that we have made Deer jerky 2 other times. Below is a simple recipe to start anyone off to eating tasty, delicious deer jerky.

Deer Jerky
Ingredients:
approximately 4 lbs. Ground Deer meat
salt curing mixture (by a jerky curing mix, make according to package directions)
3-4 tablespoons crushed red peppers(optional)
2-3 tablespoons chili powder (optional)
2-3 tablespoons cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoon garlic powder
2 tablespoon black pepper

Directions:
1. Clean the deer meat. Cut into small chunks. Using a food grinder, put the deer chunks in the machine and grind the meat.

2. Take grounded deer meat in a large bowl. Add the curing mixture. Mix thoroughly.

3. Add the soy sauce, sugar, garlic powder. if using, add the chili powder, cayenne, and crushed red peppers. Mix thoroughly.

4. Put the meat into the jerky gun and squeeze out sticks of grounded meat onto wire racks.

5. Preheat oven to lowest temperature on your oven, most are 200 F.

6. Put racks in the oven and let it cook for 3 hours or until desired chewiness.

Final product: Yummy, chewy, sweet, and spicy jerky flavor with no trace of gamey smell.